


Movie Sign with the Married Mads

by speccygeekgrrl



Series: lovers from the moon [14]
Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: Jonah has a plan, Kinga gets antihero lessons, Movie Night, Multi, distracting an empress on bed rest takes some planning, good thing these nerds like to sit around and watch movies anyways, pregnancy is a roller coaster and Kinga is kinda sick of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 21:28:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15980858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl
Summary: As her pregnancy advances, Kinga ends up on bed rest orders. Jonah is pretty sure that at least part of the blame for her high blood pressure is how much time she's been spending online lately. The best thing to do is occupy her with other things, and he thinks his crash course in antiheroes in film is just the thing his mad scientist wife needs to shift her terminology away from "supervillain" and toward something more universally acceptable. Of course, Max gets to help with the lesson planning.





	Movie Sign with the Married Mads

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuse for dropping this series for nine months. But I guess that was long enough for me to gestate where it's going next.

“I’m taking advantage of your convalescence,” Jonah told Kinga two days after she had been confined to bed rest with alarmingly high blood pressure. The baby’s due date was seven weeks away. She was already restless after only two days stuck in bed in the floor of Forrester Tower they’d moved into that same week, and Jonah and Max were concerned that her stress levels would stay high as long as she was connected to the internet. Stage one of Operation Occupy Kinga was something that Jonah had already been planning for a while. “I think you need a crash course in a trope that’s become relevant to your life. I hope you can keep an open mind about this.”

“I show you the bad movies, not the other way around...” She looked around, dismayed at her enforced stationary nature, then sighed heavily. “Fine, do your worst.”

“My worst? Kinga, no, I’m showing you the best movies, not the worst ones!” The look of dismay melted seamlessly into shock and then into tears. Jonah’s eyes widened and he put one arm around her shoulders, reaching for the tissues on the bedside table with the other hand. “What’s wrong?”

“Y-y-you’re showing me good movies,” she sobbed. “I’m s-stuck here and y-y-you’re not g-g-getting revenge on me...”

“Of course I’m not getting revenge on you, I love you.” He pressed a tissue into her hands and rubbed her shoulders gently. “And the last thing I need is to put work into driving you even more insane. No, I’m going to show you some antiheroes. You’ve been having a hard time imagining yourself as anything but an antagonist, but I really think that you’d benefit from an adjustment in terminology.”

“Wh-what are you showing me?” She dried her cheeks and wiped her nose but held onto the tissue, still sniffling gently.

“I thought we’d start with Casablanca to demonstrate an antihero to hero shift,” Jonah said.

“That’s one of Max’s favorites, we shouldn’t watch it without him.”

“He’ll be here in a minute, don’t worry.” By the time Jonah got the movie queued up on the TV, Max had made his appearance with a bucket of popcorn and a big bottle of the sparkling water Kinga had gotten addicted to since returning to terra firma, and they settled in on either side of her.

“You should pass those tissues over,” Max said. “Because I always need them and I’m pretty sure she will too.”

“I’ve been known to shed a tear at this one too,” Jonah said, but he handed over the box in exchange for the popcorn. “You’re not going to get mad if I riff, are you? I know this is one of the best movies ever made, but the instinct is too strong to resist.”

“If you have to riff, you have to riff,” Max said with a shrug. “Just... be funny if you have to do it.”

“That’s all I ever try to do,” Jonah said. “Don’t you have faith in my abilities yet? You did get almost two full seasons out of me.”

“I really do want to do the three of us in the theater as the season finale for season two,” Kinga said. “After the baby’s born and the brain fog clears so I have a chance at being clever.”

“I think that’ll be fun,” Jonah said. “And Netflix is going to make a killing on us, you know? We were already a top rated series before you took over the country, imagine what’ll happen when season two drops.”

“The conspiracy theorists are already losing their minds over us,” Max said dryly. “Digging through season one for evidence of something that didn’t happen until three months after the show dropped. I can only imagine their reaction to season two.”

“We can present the baby as our final invention exchange,” Kinga said. “A collaborative effort.” She nudged Jonah with her elbow. “Well? Let’s get this show on the road.”

“Send her the movie, Jonah,” Max said with a laugh, and she elbowed him next.

“Watch it, you.”

“Movie in the hole,” Jonah said cheerfully, and hit play. She grumbled a little more but quickly settled down and paid attention. She’d seen it before, of course, but when she watched it with Max he never talked over it, too reverent for one of his favorite films, although he always hummed along to As Time Goes By. Jonah was full of little facts and quips though, pointing out that the movie took place right before Pearl Harbor and that during filming no one knew how it would end as it went through rewrites almost the entire time it was being shot, repeating famous misquotes as the real quotes were said, and by the end of the movie she felt like she almost understood what he was trying to get across.

“Do you get why he’s an antihero?” Max asked after he stopped sniffling as the credits rolled.

“I mean, that was a master class in interpersonal manipulation,” Kinga said. “He played all of them. I couldn’t have just let her go at the end, though. I couldn’t choose to let either of you walk away from me, let alone push you into someone else’s arms.” She clutched at both their wrists.

“Well, you won’t have to make that choice, neither of us is going anywhere,” Jonah said, catching her hand in his. “But you’ll probably be sick of us after seven weeks of mostly only us now that you’re used to being back among society."

“I think you underestimate how nostalgic I get for the peace of Moon 13 sometimes,” she said dryly. “I’m trying to look on the bright side of this. At least I’ll be well rested when our lives get totally turned upside-down by a newborn. And the two of you are keeping things running smoothly while I’m out of the public eye.”

“When are you going to announce that you’re pregnant, anyways?” Jonah asked. “You’ve done an unbelievable job of keeping it under wraps until now, but people are going to notice your absence pretty soon.”

“I guess I couldn’t go the entire way with keeping it a secret. But making it to eight months wasn’t half bad,” she said. “I didn’t realize how many sins you could hide with good tailoring and camera angles.”

“Don’t call our baby a sin,” Max said.

“Yeah, she’s legitimate now,” Jonah said.

“The baby isn’t the sin, what the baby is doing to my waistline is the sin.” Her eyes widened, and she pulled both their hands to her belly to feel the baby move. “I think she’s objecting too.”

“Oh...” Max slid his hand under her t-shirt to feel the tiny kicking through her skin. “She’s lively, isn’t she?”

“She already knows when people are talking about her,” Jonah said. “And wants to participate in the conversation. I bet our daughter will be just as strong-willed as her mother.”

“Of course she will be,” Kinga said. “She’s a Forrester. We’re not wilting violets.”

“No, you’re very thorny roses,” Max said. “Deceptively attractive and dangerous.”

“Speaking of attractive and dangerous, I have a female antihero on deck next,” Jonah said.

“Antiheroine,” Kinga said.

“Isn’t that just Narcan?” Max asked. She elbowed him hard for the terrible pun, but Jonah huffed a laugh.

“Have you seen The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo already?” he asked.

“Oh, that’s a grim one,” Max said. “Are you sure you want to give her ideas like that?”

“I've seen it,” Kinga said. “And, again, not a wilting violet. But neither of you has anything to worry about as long as you don’t mistreat me.”

“Not in a million years,” Jonah said. “I would never raise a hand to you in the first place, and you have too many ways to dispose of me if I ever did.”

“If you have any doubt left about me after three decades, you’ve never mentioned it,” Max said.

“I don’t,” she said, leaning against Max fondly. “I trust you completely. I don’t remember a time when that wasn’t true.” He wrapped his arms around her and she snuggled up, one hand tugging Jonah’s t-shirt until he joined the cuddle and she sighed at the warmth of being caught between them. “You both treat me so well. Even though I’m... difficult.”

“Difficult doesn’t mean not worthwhile,” Jonah said. “You’ve always been difficult. But so rewarding. I’m pretty sure neither of us expected you to get less difficult after we married you.” Kinga sniffled a little, and Max pressed a tissue into her hand, already well-versed in her pregnancy-induced emotional rollercoaster.

“We’re in love, not delusional,” Max said. “But I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if you suddenly became easy to handle.”

“Just wait until the baby gets here,” Kinga said, voice wobbling. “Then you’ll have two difficult Forrester women to handle.”

“I don’t know about that,” Jonah said. “Maybe she’ll get a dose of mellowness from her dad. We’re both pretty easygoing. If she was a clone of you, _then_ I’d be worried. But she’s not only yours.”

“Do we want to know whose she is?” Kinga asked. “I know what you said when I found out I was pregnant but it’s been a few months to think about it.”

“I kind of just want to find out as she grows up,” Max said. “It probably won’t be obvious right off the bat, but I think we’ll clue in as she gets older.”

“Maybe we can find out for sure just to confirm our suspicions once we have them,” Jonah said. “Is it silly that I’m really excited to meet her?”

“It’d be silly if you weren’t,” Max said.

“I’ve already had dreams about holding her,” Kinga said. “Except in my dream she looked kind of like a cat and kind of like a baby.”

“I do also want a cat,” Max said. “But not a part cat daughter.”

“Well, now that we’re not living in a hotel you can have a cat,” Kinga said.

“I mean, we haven’t even been moved in here for a week," Jonah pointed out. "But we probably should get the cat before the baby if we want them to coexist peacefully. Hopefully that’ll be enough time to get settled before she shows up.”

“We could get a lot of cats," Max said a little dreamily. "We could make this a very cat-friendly home. Nice that all the ugly things we took out of the place basically paid for the stuff we actually want in it, isn't it? Who knew that garish gold crap would be so popular on auction?”

“Everyone wants a piece of the biggest disaster the country’s ever seen,” Jonah said. “Except us.”

“I don’t know, I think taking his building counts as a piece,” Kinga said.

“I think tearing out the inside and rebuilding it means we don’t have to count it,” Max said. “It’s just ours now.”

“I never thought a New York high rise would be my starter home,” Jonah said.

“Yeah, well, a moon base was our starter home, we’re accustomed to a certain amount of going completely overboard,” Max laughed.

“It’s not only a New York high rise, it’s our equivalent of the White House,” Kinga pointed out. “Just much bigger and better located.”

“I never thought my starter home would be a seat of government,” Jonah said, and Kinga grinned at him.

“You never thought literally anything that’s happened since you fell into our clutches,” she said.

“Okay, true.”

“At some point this will all feel normal.”

“I hope not,” Jonah said.

“It won’t,” Max said. “You’ll just accept that normal isn’t a metric that matters in your life any more.”

“Normal was never a huge deal for me anyways,” Jonah said. “But even if it ever had been, I would have known I was leaving that in the rear-view somewhere between the time I helped plan a coup and the time the two of you put a ring on my finger.”

“What, not the time you agreed to raise a baby with us?” Kinga asked.

“I mean, that was about twelve hours from planning the coup,” Max pointed out.

“I guess you’re right, I abandoned normal the minute you offered to let me bail and I doubled down on staying,” Jonah said. “Do you ever wonder where you’d be right now if things were normal?”

“Neither of us would exist,” Kinga said. “Our entire lives are predicated on the abnormality inherent in our creation. I wouldn’t be me if I had a mom. Max wouldn’t be Max if he hadn’t been cloned.”

“Why, where would you be if your life was normal?” Max asked. Jonah sat back slightly and regarded his spouses with a calm, considering look, and then smiled.

“Doesn’t matter. This is so much better.”

“Of course it is,” Kinga said, stretching slightly before making a grumpy sound. “I need to get out of bed. I think she put her elbow in my bladder.”

“Are you ascribing malicious intent to our daughter in the womb?” Jonah asked, trying not to laugh.

“Even you didn’t get started with the malicious intent until you were a toddler,” Max added, scooting out of bed to make way for her to get out of it, and she wrinkled her nose at him.

“I didn’t say she did it on purpose. But the bigger she gets, the less comfortable I get. And we’ve still got a ways to go.”

“Need a hand?” Max asked.

“What I need you to do is get me ice cream,” she said.

“Of course. Chocolate?”

“Not just chocolate. Phish Food.”

“Ah yes,” Jonah said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “The pinnacle of chocolate craving. Luckily, we happen to live in a place with near-instantaneous grocery delivery. Don’t worry about this, Max, I’ve got it.”

“Get pistachio too. And maple walnut,” she said as she headed out of the room. Max took the opportunity to cuddle up to Jonah, making him switch to one-handed phone operation.

“I like your movie lesson plan,” he said. “When are we watching the original trilogy?”

“Tomorrow,” Jonah said with a laugh, wrapping an arm around Max. “I couldn’t wait.”

“Good, I didn’t think you would wait.” Max leaned up to steal a kiss. “I like watching movies with you. Even familiar things feel new with your comments.”

“I know Kinga discourages you from riffing when it’s just the two of you, but I like it when you do with me,” Jonah said. “It’s more fun with someone to riff off of.”

“I couldn’t do that with Casablanca,” Max said, sounding scandalized. “It’s a perfect film. I will when we go on, though. And I bet she’ll start if we’re both doing it.”

“You think so?”

“She hates feeling left out. And she’s _scathing_ when she does make comments. She'd usually only do it with me if she were really tired or really drunk.”

“I would expect nothing less,” Jonah said. “But it’s funny when she’s acid-tongued as long as it’s not aimed at either of us.”

"It's still funny even when it is aimed at us," Max said dryly. "But more funny when it's not, yes."

"What's funny?" Kinga asked as she came back into the room, sighing when she cuddled up to Max's other side.

"You are," Jonah said. "You're funny when you're mean to people who aren't us."

"I'm barely mean to either of you these days," she said, and Max gave her a dubious look. "What? I'm so much nicer, even with the pregnancy hormones screwing with my head."

"You made me cry three days ago," he said, and she rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, because you got overexcited thinking about a newborn photoshoot, not because I was being mean to you."

"She has a point," Jonah said. "All she did was suggest the idea, you're the one who got all worked up about it."

"I guess that's fair," Max said.

"You planned the whole thing out already, didn't you," Kinga said, and Max turned pink.

"Maybe. I... possibly have already booked Anne Geddes for it."

"You're adorable," Jonah said, and pressed a kiss to the top of Max's head. His phone buzzed, and he hopped out of bed after glancing at it. "Ice cream's here. Get the next movie cued up while I'm fetching it?" He tossed the remote into Max's lap on his way out of the bedroom. Kinga stole it immediately.

"I'm not really feeling the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo today," she said. "Why don't you suggest one?"

"Casablanca was what I suggested when he asked my opinion on antiheroes," Max said. "And I don't blame you. It's definitely not an ice cream and cuddles flick."

"I think I'd rather watch a comedy."

"Recent or older?"

"Something I've already seen before."

"What kind of a mood are you in?"

"Tired and nihilistic?"

"Big Lebowski?"

"You're perfect," Kinga said, and Max laughed and kissed her cheek.

"Maybe not perfect, but pretty close." She caught him to steal a proper kiss, then rested her head on his shoulder while she pulled it up on the TV. "Remember the night we watched it with the White Russians?"

"In bits and pieces."

"Well, you did have a lot of them."

"I don't know why," she said, wrinkling her nose. "They're gross."

"You only think they're gross because you had too many and ruined them forever for yourself."

"Don't tell Jonah about that."

"Oh, come on, everyone has a story like that. It's not even that embarrassing."

"I threw up in your aloe vera."

"Killing it," Max reminded her, and Kinga groaned and dropped her head into her hands. "From alcohol poisoning."

"I think it was from the stomach acid."

"That aloe was the first plant I got when I had to live on my own," he said, and smiled. "So by then you killing it was fine. Talking to plants isn't necessary when the person you really want to talk to comes back. I'd rather have you than a waist-high aloe plant."

“We should get plants,” she said. “Plants that won’t kill a baby or a cat.”

“I’m sorry, did you just say that we should get plants? Didn’t you try to convince me that we wouldn’t need plants on the Moon?”

“No, I tried to convince you that you should leave the hydroponics to the Boneheads and also protested against having a UV lamp in our bedroom.”

“Oh, right.”

“Because you remember the time I burned under a UV lamp.”

“That’s why you don’t take naps under them,” Max said patiently, and Kinga rolled her eyes. 

“I was trying to produce vitamin D.” She was mid-sentence when Jonah walked back in with three spoons and four pints of ice cream.

“I’d make a joke about being sure you’re getting enough D, but it seems like a weird time for it.”

“Don’t make jokes about that,” Kinga said, and she liberated the Phish Food immediately upon Jonah’s return to the bed. “Because you know I’m a hormonal mess and I feel like an unsexy sea cow and not the femme fatale I know I used to be.”

“You’re not an unsexy sea cow,” Jonah said. “You’re still sexy when you’re pregnant. You’re like, uh…”

“A mer-matron?” Max chimed in. “Not so much a mer- _maid_ at this point, but--” Kinga wrapped her hand in the neck of his t-shirt and yanked him closer, eyes narrowed.

“Watch it.”

“I’m just aiming for linguistic accuracy!”

“I wouldn’t,” Jonah said. “Not right now. You’re a sexy mermaid, honey. But if you’re going along with that, then I’m going to get you to go along with the hydro-exercise routine the doula advised for you.”

“I don’t like how I look in a swimsuit now,” Kinga said, and stuck a spoonful of ice cream in her mouth stubbornly. 

“We do own the pool,” Max pointed out. “You don’t technically need to wear a swimsuit if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t like how I look naked, either.”

“I think you’re in the minority on that, at least in this room,” Jonah said. “Because you’re fucking adorable when you’re not in tears. You’re actually glowing. And, you know, pregnancy is _someone_ ’s kink, so you have that going for you--” He shut up abruptly when her eyes started welling up.

“I d-d-don’t want to be a-- a-- an object of lust when I f-f-feel like a Thanksgiving parade balloo-oon!” She started the sentence stuttering and ended it sobbing. Max gave Jonah a look that clearly said _look what you’ve done_ and put his arms around Kinga.

“Shhh, shhh, you’re okay. You’re not a balloon. You’re not weird or grotesque or anything else you’re thinking, either. I think you’re beautiful right now and I always will. Not because of a pregnancy kink but because I love you more than probably should be humanly possible.” She turned to cry into his shoulder and he quickly passed her ice cream off to Jonah to prevent it from melting between them. 

“I’m sorry,” Jonah said, rubbing her back gently. “I didn’t mean to upset you, I was trying to make you laugh.”

“N-not funny.” 

“How can I make it up to you?” She sniffled and raised her head, looking up at him.

“Wash my hair for me tonight?”

“I’d love to. We can break in the tub and see if it’s everything we dreamed when we picked it out.” 

“Yes _please_ ,” Max said. “That was a high priority item on the to-do list once we moved in.”

“But first we should eat this ice cream and watch another movie,” Jonah said, and he handed Kinga the Phish Food again when she wiped her eyes. There was a mountain of crushed tissues building up on the bed, between Kinga’s rapid emotional fluctuations and her husbands’ tears at Casablanca, and she added another one to the pile before taking the ice cream back.

“We’re not watching Dragon Tattoo,” she informed Jonah. “We’re watching Big Lebowski.”

“Also an antihero,” Jonah pointed out. “So it fits the theme.”

“What else do you have planned?”

“Star Wars marathon tomorrow,” Max chirped, and she rolled her eyes.

“You mean our yearly rewatch come early?”

“You watch it every year?” Jonah asked.

“Well, yeah,” Max said. “You were there when we did it last year.”

“I thought that was just prep for Last Jedi coming out.”

“No, we watch at least the originals every year around December,” Kinga said. “He tried to inflict the Christmas special on me once and lived to regret it.”

“In my defense, it was the first time either of us had seen it, and it was the last time, too,” Max said.

“We did just watch it like, three months ago,” Jonah pointed out. “But I didn’t think you’d object to rewatching it with a more analytical mindset.”

“I’m not complaining,” Kinga said, and swapped her ice cream pint for the pistachio Max was holding without asking. “I just wanted to know what was coming up. And how long this lesson plan is.”

“I had less than a week’s worth of stuff in mind,” Jonah said. “We just wanted to keep you occupied, since you aren’t going to be leaving the building.”

“Afraid I’ll go stir-crazy?”

“More afraid that you’ll go internet-mad,” Max said. “We don’t want you to get lost in the chatter about our administration while you’re homebound.”

“I mean, my office is in this building, I think I should still have access to it.”

“Bed rest,” Jonah said, and Kinga rolled her eyes.

“Get me a wheelchair, then. I’m allowed to sit up, I can sit at my desk. I’m pregnant, not a prisoner.”

“I actually had a thought about something you could do without leaving home that’s beneficial but not taxing,” Max said, and she turned to look at him expectantly. “You’re pretty well beloved… make a few informational videos. Break the news about your pregnancy, and do some tips for new moms. Maybe talk up universal access to birth control and maternal care. You could work with Planned Parenthood to do a series of videos. Maybe don’t look at the comments after you post them though.”

“I have a very aggressive moderator,” Kinga said with a faint smile, “I think the comments will be fine. But yeah, I like that idea. All of our little peeks into our lives are really well received. This should be good. And helpful.”

“Maternal health statistics have been pretty terrible in this country lately. Hopefully these will do something to help with that,” Jonah said. “You just have to make sure not to cry on camera.”

“Then you better not tease me while I’m making them.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Are we going to watch a movie or what?” she asked, trading the pistachio ice cream for the maple walnut Jonah was holding. 

“Of course,” Max said, and hit play. 

It took less than two minutes for Jonah to start riffing, only a minute longer for Max to join him… and less than six before Kinga huffed a laugh through her nose and started to mock the movie with them.


End file.
